Yimeng Revolution Memorial Hall carries its red stories beyond the walls

A simple stage, a red backdrop, a banner — and the "Yisheng" lecture team of the Yimeng Revolution Memorial Hall begins. The stories of the Yimeng Red Sisters, the meaning of the Yimeng Spirit and the wartime history behind the hall's artifacts are told in plain language, and audiences are visibly moved.

Such scenes are routine for the memorial hall, which has run a "seven destinations" program of red story lectures for several years. This year, under the city's campaign to improve official conduct and capability, the hall has combined "inviting people in" with "going out" — building lecture teams, producing set-piece classes and hosting teaching programs.

Going out has taken the stories far. On Oct 20 an exhibition titled "Passing the flame: Yimeng and the sea" opened on the Bund in Shanghai, using historical photographs and documents to retell the years when soldiers and civilians in the Yimeng base area fought side by side. A month-long Yimeng Spirit exhibition had already been held at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in April. "This is an important part of implementing the strategic cooperation agreement between the university and the memorial hall, and a concrete way of bringing the Yimeng Spirit into ideological and political education at the university," said Yu Zhaoyang, a standing committee member of the university's Party committee and head of its publicity department. Tens of thousands of students visited.

Earlier, the hall worked with Linyi University on a national program to pass on the Yimeng Spirit, now in its third year and covering more than 2,800 universities and over a million young people. This year the program was upgraded into a themed campaign open to universities nationwide, built around online coverage and offline immersion. Online, national gold-medal docents give lectures, quizzes and cultural programs, with total views passing 10 million. Offline, the hall designs immersive study courses for visiting universities.

So far this year the lecture team has visited more than 20 universities, military units and enterprises. Building on partnerships with Peking University and Shandong University, it has extended cooperation to vocational colleges, setting up practice bases for "great ideological and political courses" with Shandong Transport Technician College and Linyi Vocational College.

Inviting people in has deepened the connection. During the 2026 summer vacation, volunteer teams from more than 130 universities, including Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shandong University, Communication University of China, University of Science and Technology Beijing and Qingdao University of Science and Technology, came to the East China Martyrs' Cemetery and the memorial hall for immersive study programs. The hall has tailored courses and micro-classes on the Yimeng Red Sisters and on revolutionary songs, plus programs built around its collection of military artifacts.

"The story of the Yimeng Red Sisters showed me that the Yimeng Spirit is not a slogan but a history written by ordinary people through their actions," said Xia Ji, a 2023 undergraduate at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology. "Standing in the exhibition hall and learning to tell those stories, I felt the responsibility of passing this on."

The hall has received 610,000 visitors this year, hosted more than 2,300 themed teaching and study batches involving 196,000 people, and welcomed teams from more than 130 major universities.

For younger audiences the approach is differentiated. At Linyi Xingyuan Primary School on Sept 17, pupils recited Liang Qichao's essay "Young China" at the close of a lecture series. At Yihe Experimental Primary School, docent Wang Haolin told the story of Cao Yuhai, a top-ranked hero of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, while at Linyi No.4 Middle School docent Zhou Yuancheng explained the background of the revolutionary song "Follow the Communist Party".

"The Yimeng Spirit used to be a paragraph in a textbook. Today I saw the artifacts and heard the stories, and I understand what peace cost," said Chen Yinuo, a first-year student at Linyi No.4 Middle School. "I would like to be a new-era storyteller of Yimeng."

The hall's study brand now reaches schools across the city and beyond, drawing students from Rizhao, Jining and Xuzhou. It has hosted more than 600 study batches for young people, with over 100,000 teachers and students taking part.

Editor：韩蒙蒙